Meet the gang: Vedrana

We recently sat down with our instructors and asked them some hard hitting questions (are you and Luna sisters?*) to learn a bit more about them. Here’s our chat with Vedrana!

What is your favourite thing about swing dancing?

The thing I usually get too many feelings thinking about is how in the end, it comes down to you, the music and whoever you’re dancing with, for three minutes or so. Every time you dance with someone, even if you’ve danced with them a hundred times and even if you know the song backwards, it is a completely unique experience every time.

What has been your most memorable moment on the dance floor?

I was at a local celebration of Frankie Manning’s 100th birthday in Hammersmith, London. I started solo dancing with a couple of other people, and pretty soon three people who had come along to the beginner lesson before asked if they could join us. They’d never done any solo dancing before, but by the end of the song we were all dancing like fools. Three songs later, there were eight of us, all dancing together- I thought I was going to barf a rainbow, I was so happy.

What are you working on in your dancing right now?

I started tap this year, which sometimes just feels like ritual humiliation because it definitely doesn’t come easily to me BUT I do feel incredibly pleased once I’ve learned how to do something. And I’m finding it’s a mix of learning a musical instrument and dance, which is a bottomless pit of dance geekery that I’m only just starting to discover. It’s also totally reminded me how exciting it is to be a beginner at something! I often hear great dancers being described as ‘dancing inside the music’- something I’m trying to find out at the moment is what that means and what that feels like. I have a feeling I might be working on that one for a while!

You get to hear any jazz musician from history live. Who?

This is ridiculously hard to answer- but I have a feeling I’d enjoy seeing either Cab Calloway or Ella Fitzgerald. Both of them have this amazing charisma that comes through in their recordings that I have a feeling would be amazing to see in person. Also, I can’t decide which I’d prefer to see more: Ella Fitzgerald pretending to be other singers and ad lib-ing lyrics, or Cab Calloway wearing a zoot suit.

If you had a super power what would it be?

I don’t know…getting people to clap on 2 and 4 when they start clapping on 1 and 3? Knowing when chicken is cooked through without having to cut into it?